Efforts to improve the capability of the civil service have been a constant feature of the past 45 years of civil service reform.

The latest is the Civil Service Capabilities Plan, which has some significant strengths. It addresses most of the key capability gaps the Institute for Government raised in its open letter on reform last year, and could mark a step change in the rate of capability building.

But any new plan needs a stern reality check. Sadly, many of the problems diagnosed by the Fulton Review in 1968 are very similar to those described by the Civil Service Reform Plan, published in June 2012. Despite endless plans, strategies, units and institutions, civil service capability seems resistant to treatment.

A common mistake is simply equating capability with skills. Encouragingly, this plan has avoided doing that. It recognises that capability is the sum of skills and the way the civil service works. The plan identifies four key priorities: commercial skills and behaviours; delivering projects and programmes; leading and managing change; and redesigning services. Many actions are to be completed in 2013, and the remainder by 2015, when the success of the plan will be independently assessed.

On commercial and project capabilities, the plan intensifies the drive led by the Efficiency and Reform Group to rationalise and often centralise procurement. It also strongly emphasises the need for additional commercial skills and behaviours. These actions are the most compelling in the plan. It is not a coincidence that this central team already has significant resources, capacity and credibility.

On leading and managing change, a significant reform is the plan's requirement for senior leaders to improve the engagement of their staff through individual targets. Unlike other priorities, however, there is no "profession" or individual lead to give this focus and identity, or to coordinate across departments.

The fourth priority area is an intriguing one – redesigning services and delivering them digitally. Here, the narrative is overwhelmingly focused on digital, which is not sufficient. Reform of government is going to rely on innovative new models of delivery, but not all of them will be digitally dependent.

Success factors

Overall, four success factors stand out for this plan. Firstly, the "professions model" for building capability gets a powerful shove as the approach of choice to build capability. However, this approach depends on a much more collaborative civil service – overcoming the entrenched departmentalism that prevents such working will require interventions that go well beyond this plan.

Second, past reforms reveal the critical role of dogged and personal leadership. Sir Bob Kerslake needs to commit his time and authority, and some big-hitting permanent secretaries must be seen to add their weight to the plan.

Finally, ministers need to see improved capability that delivers their top priorities. If the most reforming secretaries of state can see that actions from the capability plan help deliver their reforms, they will become powerful advocates for this approach.

A new civil service?

On launching the Civil Service Reform Plan, Kerslake said it was time to move away from the model of a civil service that is all about free-standing federal departments. Some parts of the capability plan set out a quite different model for Whitehall's big, customer-facing, transactional institutions. They will build specific capabilities within the department, while others will share services and draw on expert corporate teams.

If civil service leaders extend this approach vigorously in other reforms they will rapidly reinvent what departments look like, and could transform the shape as well as the capability of the civil service.

Peter Thomas is director of civil service reform at the Institute for Government.

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